Thousands cheer Hollande, who visited city in Mali newly liberated from radical Islamists

TIMBUKTU, Mali 
French President Francois Hollande bathed in the cheers and accolades of the thousands of people of this embattled city on Saturday, making a triumphant stop six days after French forces parachuted into Timbuktu to liberate the fabled city from the radical Islamists occupying it.

His arrival comes three weeks after France unilaterally launched a military intervention in order to stem the advance of the al-Qaeda-linked fighters, and since then French troops have ousted the rebels from the three main northern cities they occupied, including Timbuktu. “Alongside the Malians and the Africans, we have liberated this town. Today Timbuktu. And others are still to come,” Hollande told the French troops who stood at attention on the tarmac of the city’s airport. They secured the airfield on Monday, after special forces parachuted onto the dunes just north of the city. They were joined by 600 infantrymen, who came in by land in a convoy of armored cars. “You have accomplished an exceptional mission.”

Thousands of people stood elbow-to-elbow behind a perimeter line in downtown Timbuktu, hoisting the homemade French flags they had prepared for Hollande’s arrival. The swatches of red, white and blue fabric were sewed together by hand, and held up by sticks. Others painted the three colors on pieces of paper, and held them aloft as the president’s convoy rolled into the sand-blanketed square.

Women wore vibrantly colored African prints, and bared their midriffs, their arms and their backs, after nearly a year of being forced to wear a colorless, all-enveloping veil. They danced as men played the drums — a loud, raucous celebration after months of privation.

In a sign of how tense the city remains, Hollande arrived with what looked like a private army. Soldiers holding bomb-sniffing dogs and at least a dozen armored personnel carriers patrolled the square in front of the library of ancient manuscripts which Hollande visited during his two-hour stop in the city.

Just before French troops arrived in Timbuktu last week, the retreating Islamic extremists set fire to a portion of the collection at the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research. It was their final blow, not just to Mali but to the world. The oldest manuscripts in the repository date back nearly 1,000 years, and are crucial to Africa’s identity, because they show the continent had a written record, not just an oral history, said the library’s acting director Abdoulaye Cisse.

Although an inventory hasn’t been completed, the director believes less than 5 percent of the library’s priceless manuscripts were destroyed, because the majority of the library was spirited out and hidden hundreds of miles away in the capital, said Cisse.

Despite the outpouring of joy, many expressed worry about France’s long-term intentions. Mali’s military has proved to be no match for the better-armed Islamic extremists, who seized a territory equal in size to France last year, after the army simply abandoned their posts. Hollande made clear France intends to hand off the control of the recuperated terrain to Mali’s military.